At the CRTC

Aboriginal Voices Radio, the organization that ran radio stations in major cities that were to target indigenous Canadians in urban communities, has lost its case at the Federal Court of Appeal to have it reverse a CRTC decision revoking its licences for blatant violation of its conditions of licence. This clears the way for the commission to order the stations off the air and proceed with applications from other groups to launch new indigenous stations on those frequencies in those cities. The decision says the CRTC has received 12 applications from five groups for new stations in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Ottawa.

The CRTC is giving itself an extra year (so until August 2018) to deal with licence renewals for several independent television services, including Super Channel, Family Channel, Évasion, Silver Screen Classics, Explora, Télémagino, Rewind, Wild TV, Playmen, NTV in St. John’s, CFTV-DT in Leamington, Ont., and some ethnic channels. This will bring their licences in line with other CBC and independent services so that new conditions of licence can be implemented for all of them at the same time.

The CBC has published its quarterly financial report (PDF). It shows increases in both revenues and expenses mainly related to broadcasting the 2016 Olympics. There was also a $1 million drop in revenue from subscriptions to specialty channels (CBC News, RDI, ARTV, Explora and Documentary).

Videotron looks to finally add The Comedy Network and CTV News Channel in high definition (though only for subscribers with next-generation Illico boxes), according to illicotech.com. Others are MTV Canada, E!, Gusto, Nickelodeon Canada, Treehouse and Haiti HD. There are still some more it could upgrade, like TVO, BNN and MSNBC, but Comedy and CTV News, both owned by Bell Media, were probably the most in demand.

Radio

Print

Rogers has let its staff — and the public — know what’s happening to its French consumer magazines. It’s keeping Châtelaine, though like its English counterpart it will go down to only six issues a year. L’actualité is in the midst of a sale process. And it couldn’t find a buyer for LouLou, so that magazine is shutting down in both languages. About 60 employees will lose their jobs, though some of those could be rehired if L’actualité is sold. Rogers is meeting with staff at English magazines today (including Maclean’s) to detail staff cuts on that side.

Online

Média Boutique, which works on a business model started at Voir in which businesses buy ads through gift cards that media then sell to consumers at discounted rates, is growing its client base. It has signed with V and RNC Media.

More news about specific people cut at Postmedia should come this week as the deadline for responses to buyout applications passes. Some Citizen staff like Ian MacLeod, Janet Wilson and Jason Fekete announced their departures already on Twitter.

There continues to be few surprises in the declining and shrinking Canadian Media marketplace. With a handful of companies owning (directly or indirectly) most of the media sources, the lack of true competition has a natural effect on things. Combine that with people moving away from print media and to a lesser extent away from broadcast TV, and you have a solid trend. That the few remaining megacorps are all trying to pad out their bottom lines only helps to push things even further down the toilet.

Magazines, unless they really offer something special, are toast, plain and simple. Just like music stores before them, newstands and magazine stores have gone from a “one in every neighborhood” thing to a notable exception in any area. When you lose your distribution and sales points, it’s not long before you lose the battle to stay relevant. Magazines have a bigger problem of insanely long lead times, such that anything in them is already heavily out of date before it’s even printed. Even the best newsmagazine types are still days or even weeks out of date. At the point where digital media completely takes over (say when good internet service comes to airplanes and such) then you will see magazines go away.

Newspaper aren’t really that far behind, except that the cycle is still short enough to be almost relevant. But the value of the readers is way down, the ad rates are pitiful, and it’s unlikely to change any time soon. Quite simply, fewer and fewer companies can afford to pay big ad rates to get the less than desirable eyeballs that print media as a whole has right now. So cuts are unavoidable.

Give it a couple of more years at most, and Canada will be down to maybe 2 (or perhaps 3) national newspapers with local wrappers at best. It’s just how bad things are getting.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, the real secret these days is that most websites aren’t profitable either. So moving online isn’t working out for most, for various reasons.

Is there some reason (technical or otherwise) why so many media companies are clustered around René-Lévesque and Papineau? I can understand Guys like CHOM and CJAD who have become step-siblings, but why CHOM next to CTV to TV5, to CBC and a hop-skip-and-jump from TVA.

Is there some reason (technical or otherwise) why so many media companies are clustered around René-Lévesque and Papineau?

No hard reason, but unofficially it’s more convenient for everyone to be located in a cluster close to each other. There are exceptions (Global and City’s offices are in central downtown, and most of the former Astral Media TV offices are in a building on McGill College).